Data Guy (Me)

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Leadership & Development

Sharing Truth

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Leo Tolstoy book coverGreat point:

People very often do not accept the truth, because they do not like the form in which the truth is presented to them.

Great advice:

If you know the truth, or if you think that you know the truth, try to pass it on to the others, as simply as you can, along with the feeling of love for those persons to whom you pass it.

— A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Selected from the World’s Sacred Texts by Leo Tolstoy (translated by Peter Sekirin)

(Cross-posted on my Nibbles Ninja blog.)

The 30 Second Rule

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When most people meet others, they search for ways to make themselves look good. The key to the 30-Second Rule is reversing this practice. When you make contact with people, instead of focusing on yourself, search for ways to make them look good.

— The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You by John C. Maxwell

Interview: Mike Rognlien

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On Memorial Day, I had the honor of interviewing Mike Rognlien, author of This Is Now Your Company (my review of that book).  Mike was a key HR leader for Facebook during their exponential growth (in part, building its industry-leading unconscious bias training), and is now Chief Builder of Awesome People at Multiple Hats Management.

Please take time to listen to (and see) a very smart, congenial guy…you’ll be a better leader if you do!

 

“An Ego Is a Heavy Thing to Carry”

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Randy Travis book quoteGreat quote from Randy Travis’ new book, Forever and Ever, Amen:

L.D. and I were talking one night after a show about another artist we had recently seen. The artist seemed almost rude and uncaring about the fans and so arrogant. I was certain I must have gotten the wrong impression, so I asked L.D., “Did that artist seem cocky to you?”

L.D. nodded and said, “Yeah, Hoss, an ego is a heavy thing to carry.”

I thought that was a simple yet profound statement. After that, any time I felt tempted to get cocky, I recalled, “An ego is a heavy thing to carry.”

(If yo click on the image, you’ll get a larger version.)

Review: War and Peace and IT

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War and Peace and IT cover
Image from Amazon.com

Have you ever read a book and said to yourself, “I want to lock my executives in a room and make them read this”?

Okay, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration :-), but Mark Schwartz’s latest work is one that all levels of IT management should digest, especially executives. My copy is filled why highlights and I have pages of notes. It is near impossible to select a few points to focus on for a review, but…

  • Do you want to know why it is a fundamental mistake to treat IT like a contractor versus being an equal partner in business outcomes? Read this book.
  • Do you need ideas on how to align your company’s financial model with a truly agile development approach? Read this book.
  • Do you want to improve outcomes, reduce costs, and turn your employees into value-generating entrepreneurs? Read this book.

In the end… [Read more…] about Review: War and Peace and IT

Counterintuitive IT™: How Do We Change Culture?

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Slide 1

These are rough notes I put together for a ~90 minute presentation to my company’s Agile Community of Interest. I have edited them to remove any direct references to who I work for…not because you aren’t smart enough to use Google, Bing, or your favorite search engine to figure that out :-)…but because it has to be clear that I do not speak for my employer, just myself.

(If you see “our company,” or something close to it, in this post, that probably was originally the company name. “Edited” on a slide means it was adjusted to remove my employer’s name.)

There are three options to view the associated presentation: PDF, PowerPoint, and the slides embedded into this article. If you use the PowerPoint version in slideshow mode, you’ll see the cool transitions. 🙂 Please do not reuse any images unless you personally have rights to them.

Two reminders:

  • I said rough notes. 🙂 I do not spend a ton of time making sure grammar, spelling, et cetera is accurate with speaking notes.
  • These are my thoughts and my thoughts only, not those of the company who I am so blessed to be employed by.

Oh, one more note: I’m still new to Agile and DevOps, so I’m sure my perceptions will change. Heck, even if I was part of those powerful approaches from their foundations, my perceptions should change over time. What you read below is my best take on what I’ve learned so far. A massive thanks to all those who have helped me reach this point.

#letslearntogether [Read more…] about Counterintuitive IT™: How Do We Change Culture?

What Is the Right Number of Direct Reports (Span of Control)?

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Nine Lies About Work book cover
Image from Amazon.com

If you are a people manager, how many direct reports should you have? I had an Executive VP who thought it should never be more than 6. Other companies set guidelines by management level (e.g. a Manager should have 15-20, a Director less, etc.)

Is there a good way to establish this number?

I’m partway in a new book, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World, by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall. These are three separate quotes from the chapter about the second lie I found especially interesting:

  • “So, each and every week these leaders have a brief check-in with each team member, during which they ask two simple questions: What are your priorities this week? How can I help?”
  • “This leads us to one of the most important insights shared by the best team leaders: frequency trumps quality.”
  • “But by pinpointing the weekly check-in as the single most powerful ritual of the world’s best team leaders, we can now know the exact span of control that’s right for every single team leader: it’s the number of people that you, and only you, can check in with every week.”

When there are questions about how many direct reports a given Manager/Director/etc. should have, this may be a perfect test. Ultimately, if we cannot properly support your employees, we have too many.

Intersubjective Realities

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Nine Lies About Work book cover
Image from Amazon.com

I’ve just started what looks to be a tremendous work by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World. I’m in a section about realities, which starts off quickly discussing “objective” and “subjective” ones. Then:

But Harari goes on to argue that there is a third kind of reality, that this kind of reality is unique to humans, and that this kind of reality explains the dominance (for good or ill) of our species. There are some things that are real simply because we all agree they’re real—things whose existence depends not on any objective reality, nor on any individual’s subjective reality, but rather on our collective belief in them.

Followed shortly after by:

Harari calls these extended, communal realities intersubjective realities, and tells us that they’re the reason our achievements as a species are so different from those of our planet-mates.

And finally, a sentence later:

Our belief in the intersubjective reality of nation, for example, enables us to cooperate with our fellow citizens to finance and build monuments, or to wage war; our belief in the intersubjective reality of democracy allows us to elect governments and to follow their laws.

I can imagine how these intersect in the “real world” of companies, and look forward to how Buckingham and Goodall elaborate. However, what struck me is that, perhaps, the U.S. seems so frayed as a nation right now because what were intersubjective realities…are, in many cases, no longer. That, maybe, there is a battle going on between un-harmonizable group-level intersubjective realities to create new, national intersubjective realities. [Read more…] about Intersubjective Realities

Review: Free to Focus

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Free to Focus book cover
Image from Amazon.com

I was blessed to be able to work in the tremendous country of Australia for a couple of years on the Olympics, but I came close to being buried there.

I almost drowned.

I enjoyed body surfing, but because I am a tall guy, I needed to go out relatively far to decrease the chance a wave would slam me into the ocean floor. I was cautious, staying between the flags on Maroubra Beach (where I loved the large waves). However, after swimming from the shore a bit one time, when I looked back I was no longer between the flags and much further out than I expected. A riptide had “assisted” me.

No matter how hard I tried to get back, I was getting no closer to the beach. Those gigantic waves I loved were pounding me, especially when I finally gave up on my male ego and raised my hands so the lifeguards would see, and save, me.

But they didn’t see, or save, me. All raising my hand did was bring me closer to drowning. I was spent. [Read more…] about Review: Free to Focus